5.1 Bilingualism

Although this view may be changing in today’s legal environment, historically it has been far too common to think that any bilingual speaker can be a qualified and competent court interpreter.1 This is a mistaken belief. Accurate interpretation requires a sophisticated college-level use of both English and the foreign language. Accordingly, in the case of legal interpretation, the interpreter must understand the four varieties of spoken legal language: formal legal language, standard English, colloquial English, and other sub-varieties. Moreover,

[I]interpreting requires the use of several cognitive and motor skills, including: Listen Comprehend Abstract the message from the words and the word order Store ideas Search for the conceptual and semantic matches Reconstruct the message in the other language WHILE . . . speaking and listening for the next chunk of language process WHILE . . . monitoring their own output.2

Both aspects of interpretation—mastery of two languages and understanding the mechanics of the process, including cultural competence—require specialized training. Whatever skills a bilingual speaker may have by virtue of birth or language arts education are not an adequate substitute for mastery of the specific professional skill of interpretation.

• 1Cassandra L. McKeown & Michael G. Miller, Say What? South Dakota’s Unsettling Indifference to Linguistic Minorities in the Courtroom, 54 S.D.L. Rev. 33, 39 (2009).
• 2Minn. Sup. Ct. Interpreter Advisory Comm., Best Practices Manual on Interpreters in the Minnesota State Court System 24 (1999).